


Roma Amor

by lacygrey



Category: Night at the Museum (Movies)
Genre: Family, Immortality, Multi, OCs galore, Roman Times, Roman women, Slow Burn, pride and prejudice - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 20:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13220139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacygrey/pseuds/lacygrey
Summary: In which Octavius has five sisters and his mother thinks Jed would make perfect husband material for one of them.





	Roma Amor

 

When Jed falls asleep for real – not frozen like they are at every sunrise but truly asleep – he momentarily forgets that he’s in a museum and wakes as though, for a few minutes, he’s really in the old American West.

That’s why, when he jolts awake beside a dead campfire somewhere in the prairie zone of the ‘North American environments’ exhibit, where the lights are off and there’s only a dim glow in the sky that one might mistake for dawn (actually a fire exit sign on the staircase just round the corner), his first reaction is full alertness to his surroundings and his second is that something is terribly wrong. He has his rifle ready in an instant and is scanning the horizon. There’s nothing or no one in sight. But, where are the rest of the party? How come there’s only see one sleeping figure by the fire.  Where is the corral? Where are the cattle? Stolen silently in the night? How? Why was no one on watch? Should it have been that lazy oaf by the fire… But then the horses are quiet. Gently, so as not to make sound, he reaches a hand over shakes the other cowboy where he lies rolled up in his blanket, his hat covering his face.

“Shhhhh, gently does it. We got ourselves a big ol’ problem.” Jed keeps his eyes trained on the land before them.

But when the man emerges blearily from the cocoon he’s made of his bedroll he has the face of someone from another life, an intensely familiar face, so much more real than all that’s around them that Jed wonders if he has only just this moment woken from a dream.

“Why, Jed why.” He groans. “Why can’t you let me…” Then he makes a start. “You’re right. Its almost dawn, we’ve got to get back.” and suddenly he is all action, pulling his boots on, kicking the dirt over the ashes of the fire and rolling up their things.

That voice -- dark, warm and a hundred percent not American. He’s dressed like a cowboy but speaks like someone from the old country. There’s something about him looks all wrong, which not to say he isn’t good looking.  

“Jedediah?” Jed had been staring. “Let’s hurry.”

A wave of vertigo threatens to engulf Jed as he remembers their true situation.

“Octavius! Hold up there, hang about, it’s okay, it’s not dawn, that’s the light from the emergency exit sign along the hall.”

Octavius doesn’t slow down.  “I think we slept longer than we intended my friend, it _is_ nearly dawn. It was a long trek and I know our attire looks right for camping out here, but I’d rather be back in my own diorama for dawn.”

So they saddle the horses and head for home.

 

 

It was Jed who’d insisted that Octavius wear western clothing for their exploration trip. ‘Riding through such terrain, you’d want to be properly covered, with chaps, not armour’. This was wild country they were facing, not a hostile army.

Seeing Oct for the first time dressed in jeans and a checked shirt made Jed do a double take. As he suspected the two of them were near enough the same size that Jed could lend him some of his clothes. The unbroken line of his denim-clad legs made Octavius look taller and showed the shape of him in a way usually hidden. Oct had shed his usual uncommonness for something still more unusual, something that brought him closer to Jed.

But, of course, Octavius complained about the jeans.

“Don’t you find them…constricting. Don’t they pinch you in just the wrong places?”  

“You just got to go with it. They make themselves to your shape. Those there are Jed shape.” That shut him up. “Go on, keep them, wear them in.  Just don’t go wearin’ ‘em up at the forum.”

And though they both laughed, for a while it was difficult to say who was more uncomfortable, Octy in the jeans or Jed thinking about it, but the moment passed as they got into their trek.

 

 

They’ve reached their side of the diorama room and are about to part ways when Octavius says:

“I was just thinking, you should visit us in Rome. My mother’s holding a party.”

“No blue jeans, I bet.”

Octavius turns and grins.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find you something suitable to wear.”

Now if Jed says yes to the idea right off there it’s without thought or consideration for any of the possible implications, in that exact moment he’s only thinking of those smiling brown eyes.

 

 

 

 

*********

 

 

 

 

It’s one impressive house.  He’s always thought Octy must be comfortably off, but here the sprawling villa, the multitude of guests and abundant spreads of exotic foods -- not to mention delicious smells -- confirm it. Octavius’ museum family are clearly high ranking members of Roman society.  Just one thing troubles the picture -- the house is only partly there. Large chunks of roof and walls have cut away so just anyone could look in.

It brings it home, once again, that none of this is actually real. That’s the thing about being a museum exhibit, everything is on display.

Oct’s mom, Claudia, spots Jed the instant he arrives, not difficult when everyone else is in togas and flowing dresses.  She’s a plump cheerful woman who shares her son’s facial features and whose grey-streaked hair is wound up in ornate braids piled so high they make her nearly as tall as Jed.  She also shares Octavius’ natural urge to hug you, which is better coming from someone not wearing armour. The holes in the house don’t seem to worry her. It’s like she’s accepted it’s just how things are, with neighbours and museum visitors alike seeing the family eating, sleeping, dressing and going about their lives.  Jed wonders whether Oct goes home much or whether he mostly stays with the army.  He also wonders, scanning the crowd, where the man’s got to.  

“We’ve been so lucky with the weather,” she laughs, “What with having the builders in.” Jed wonders for a second if she’s in some sort of denial about the whole cut-away house deal before he spots a little glint in her eye. She’s laughing at herself. And the ‘building work’ clearly hasn’t stopped half the city from attending.

They’re dimmed the nights on the diorama to give the impression of dusk and little lamps glow from alcoves in the walls, from spaces in the laden tables and spots about the garden. The people flow as though indoors and outdoors were one and the same. A dark-headed woman with her back to them sings and sways to the music while a seated man plucks at a lyre.  This is no hoedown, it’s rather a tame affair. But still Jed’s eyes follow her profile as she moves to a beat she makes herself on a tiny tambourine.

“You’ll be wanting to get changed.”  Claudia says. “Geda and Kayne will help you.”  Jed thinks he sees that same little glint in her eye again.

Why do there need to be two of them for one of him?  As they march him off up the stairs, he tries to ignore the fact they kind of remind him of Kah, or perhaps Kah’s Aunties…if Kah has Aunties who are prizefighters.  

There’s more more cloth in a toga than Jed has ever worn in one go. Geda and Kayne look at him with a mixture of curiosity and determination.

Jed sighs and takes stock of his fate.  He’s trapped in some room in Octavius’ villa, one open on the museum side, but fortunately not to the rest of Rome, with two burly Egyptians gawping at him and carrying huge pile of cloth he's expected to wear.  He guesses they want him to undress and so they can wrap him up in this ridiculous toga thing before he's allowed to go back and join the party.

If they’re staring at him a bit it’s probably that Jed’s fair hair is rare sight among the miniatures they meet. They’re just curious, very curious, but what makes him uncomfortable is not the watching, it’s that if he doesn't comply they might just come over here and…then they’re on him and he’s wrestling with the pair of them. They want him out of his clothes but they don’t know how modern clothes work and pretty near do some serious damage but have him half-way naked before he yells the biggest stream of curses he can muster and they seem to get the message. They drop him in an instant and scarper.  

He’s alone. He’ll manage very well thank you. He won’t be manhandled. He’s left with one leg still in his jeans, half a ‘carpet’ tied round him and holding with some sort of mail sack with a head hole, which he guesses goes on underneath. Fine. He pulls the thing over his head. But where should his arms go?  He puts one out the neck hole and the other out the bottom, hitching the cloth up on one side… Well it it’s supposed to be asymmetric, right? All the same, the Romans downstairs all looked a mighty bit more comfortable than he feels right now. Nevermind. He starts to wind the toga bit around himself. There’s a lot of it.

How did he allow himself to get talked into this already? Was it because Octavius is persuasive, or perhaps because Jed is easily persuaded when it comes to Octavius. It never used to be that way, he’s sure. But, these days, he just seems to have trouble saying no to Octavius. He can still hear his reasoning.   _You’re welcome in our house. You don’t want to be rushing home at daybreak if the party’s still on.  Dress like a Roman for the evening and no one will know any different if you need to stay._

Well he’s already a bit stuck. If a Octy’s soldier’s outfit has a skirt, then a toga is definitely a dress, and if this is a dress then it sure is a tight one.  He tries to take a step and tumbles forward, the rest of the fabric falling on top of him. He’s got himself in a knot. Tangled in six yard of scratchy fabric, he wonders if coming here tonight was the right choice.

Without a thought for how it will sound to the party below he starts hollering. First he yells for Octy, even though that will be real embarrassing, then he just calls for help, but the lyre and vocals combo just got reinforcements from some bagpipes and no one comes to his aid.  He struggles, but the bundle he’s in just gets tighter.  He manages to pull himself upright and takes a jump, then another, though he can’t see where he’s going, aiming to get to where he thinks the door is. It’ll hardly be a dignified entrance but at least someone will get him out of this fix before he suffocates.  Then he freezes as he remembers that the room is cut away on the museum side, if he gets it wrong it’s a long way down.

“’Aving a bit of bovver there luv?”

“Huh?” He recognises that voice.  It’s the night guard from London. This is still very embarrassing, but compared with a couple of hundred Romans, the arrival of Tilly is a godsend.  “Yeah. Yeah. Please, I’m…”

“Stuck in there are yer? I’ll get you out, don’t you fret.” Jed shakes his head enough to get the fabric off his face and is confronted with her colossal eye. “Look, I’ll put me finger on the end bit ‘ere and you twist yerself. No. The other way.”

As he unwinds himself he can hear her talking to the people at the party who can’t see his predicament. He doesn’t hear their replies.

“Is that your band. Hey are you Octavius’ sister? You don’t half look like ‘im. Do you know anything by Abba?”

Then they launch into a cover of “Dancing Queen”

Jed’s grown to recognise and like music he’s heard through the years, on the radio or from the other dioramas, but he’s never heard them combined.  The result is ...original.

“Well I could dance to that.” He hears Tilly say.

He falls on the bed, finally free from the ream of cloth, just in time to see Tilly losing herself in a disco dancing  to the band downstairs.

Then door opens and Octavius walks in, in a toga worn as it should be worn, holding an extra pair of sandals.

Octy does a double take, but to be honest it’s probably Jed who’s staring harder, because, for the number of times he’s taken the rise out of Octavius, he’s never actually seen ‘toga boy’ dressed quite this way. The cloth draped over him is warm creamy colour, a couple shades paler than his skin and he’s has a kind of deep red sash over one shoulder.        

“Jedediah, why are you wearing a laundry bag?” Octy doesn’t laugh, for which Jed is grateful, but he does look very surprised. And if Jed continues to stare it’s only because he’s trying to work it out from how Octavius is dressed how his own outfit is supposed to be.

“I thought it was a tunic.”

“Didn’t you have any help?  I’l call Geda…”

“No!”

There comes a knock at the door and Jed heart falls. “Are you decent in there?”

It’s only Claudia. She takes a look at Jed.

“Why is he wearing a laundry bag.”

Then, to Octavius, she says. “Vali must be asleep.  She said she wasn’t feeling well and might come down later but she didn’t answer when I knocked on her door.”

“My sister, Valentina.” says Octavius to Jed.

Now, Jed’s heard plenty about Oct’s family, knows he’s got several sisters and that his father is away, indefinitely probably, as the museum did not include him in the diorama.  Supposedly he’s off conquering heathen territory somewhere, quashing an uprising or terrorising Jed’s ancestors.  Octavius has five sisters, all with ambitions apparently  undesirable for a young Roman woman of high society, though the reasons are a bit lost on Jed. One is an aspiring actress, probably the girl downstairs, another a student…he doesn’t remember  hearing much about Valentina.

“She’s a sweet girl. I would so have liked you to meet her.” says Claudia.

Jed thinks about the noise he’d been making earlier,  with no idea he might be disturbing someone who wasn’t well. Miniatures getting ill was almost unheard of.  One of the upsides.

“Well.” says Claudia looking at Jed “It looks like we’ll have to get you sorted ourselves.”

It’s remarkably quick and painless. They fix him up with no fuss and hardly any touching. It’s strange, like wearing bedclothes, but oddly freeing and, from the way Octy looks at him, he supposes he must look alright.  

But then Octy makes some mumbled excuse and backs out the door.

Claudia hands him a comb. “We’ll see you downstairs presently.” and then she’s gone too, calling something in Latin after Octy.

Jed gets the sandals on, it’s a relief to find there’s part of this get up he can manage by himself.

His own clothes, including his pistols he leaves rolled up in the laundry bag, so no museum visitors spy them if, as Octy suggested, he stays over.

Then, because he always does it before he goes anywhere, and because he hasn’t given a thought to what it will look like with the rest of the ensemble, he pulls his hat on, straightens it and strides out to face the world.

 

 


End file.
